Mechanics of a crushable pebble assembly using discrete element method

The influence of crushing of individual pebbles on the overall strength of a pebble assembly is investigated using discrete element method. An assembly comprising of 5000 spherical pebbles is assigned with random critical failure energies with a Weibull distribution in accordance with the experimental observation. Then, the pebble assembly is subjected to uni-axial compression ( ϵ 33 = 1.5 % ) with periodic boundary conditions. The crushable pebble assembly shows a significant difference in stress–strain response in comparison to a non-crushable pebble assembly. The analysis shows that a ideal plasticity like behaviour (constant stress with increase in strain) is the characteristic of a crushable pebble assembly with sudden damage. The damage accumulation law plays a critical role in determining the critical stress while the critical number of completely failed pebbles at the onset of critical stress is independent of such a damage law. Furthermore, a loosely packed pebble assembly shows a higher crush resistance while the critical stress is insensitive to the packing factor (η) of the assembly.